Art

textdraw – draw geometric figures with ASCII art

textdraw is a terminal-based drawing application for creating geometric figures and text using ASCII characters. It provides an interactive workspace where lines, rectangles, ellipses and text objects can be positioned to form diagrams.

The utility is particularly useful when illustrations need to remain in a plain-text format. Drawings can be included in technical documentation, presentations, messages and other material where conventional graphical images are unnecessary.

Unlike a simple text converter, textdraw allows users to manipulate individual drawing objects. Figures can be selected, copied, moved and modified without recreating the entire illustration.

The program is deliberately lightweight and concentrates on a small collection of geometric drawing tools. Its ncurses interface makes it suitable for environments where a graphical desktop is unavailable.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

  • Provides an interactive ASCII drawing workspace.
  • Creates straight-line objects.
  • Draws rectangular shapes and borders.
  • Supports ellipse objects.
  • Inserts text objects into drawings.
  • Allows existing objects to be selected and moved.
  • Supports copying and pasting drawing elements.
  • Modifies previously created geometric figures.
  • Saves artwork for subsequent editing.
  • Exports drawings as ASCII text.

Website: salsa.debian.org/debian/textdraw
Support:
Developer: Dieter Schoppitsch
License: GNU General Public License

textdraw

textdraw is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.


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Read our verdict in the software roundup.


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